A Heap of Altered Images
by LischoPine
Summary: A very short re-imagining of the city of Lud from The Dark Tower III. Blaine has died in his cradle and Roland, Jake and Eddie (and even Oy!) have left Susannah near the corpse of the cursed train. She starts up a breakfast for when they return, but instead plays host to an unexpected guest.


**Note:** This is inspired from a dream I had, and envisions an alternate version of the events that take place in the city of Lud from The Dark Tower III. Blaine has already died (how this happened I'm not sure yet, I didn't dream up that part), and Roland, Jake and Eddie have left Oy and Susannah near the ruined body of the train, but Oy has wandered off after Jake (why they left Susannah alone, I'm also not sure yet). Anyway, this is just a very small glimpse of a different wasteland that the Ka tet could have encountered.

"How could she have this?" the Luddite boy furiously thought "How can she have such a thing?'

Susannah was sitting next to the small gas stove that was provided to her by the carcass of Blaine. It resembled one of those portable camping jobs that Coleman makes, except the short dome beneath the burner was an unusual dull pink color. A slab of bacon along with some powdered eggs was sizzling on the pan.

She had heard the boy approaching for the past half-hour. He had taken his time, and tried to mask his footsteps with the scurrying of rats, but Susannah's ears were attuned enough to pick out the slight scraping sound that only shoe-clad feet could make (if the boy's Kevlar wrappings, made from a used up ballistic vest could be called shoes).

"You want a bite to eat, or are you going to keep squatting out there in the dark hun?"

she called out "There's plenty of Instaeggs to go around, but I could only spare you a slice or two of bacon."

The boy was still filled with a jumbled mix of rage and confusion. He and three others had spent their lives huddled in the nearby power plant. Most of the generators had run out, but a few had been running for as long as he could remember. At least that was, until Blaine had toppled. Now, the drums had ceased and none of the generators were working.

He remembered how they had scraped the paint and rust off of the top of one of the generators, and used the heat radiating off the metal to cook whatever edibles they could lay their hands on. Most of this being putrid rat meat. However, the boy did remember one day when Mugler had found a bag of something called "Cornmeal". Patty had recognized the stuff and had mixed the coarse powder with some rainwater. The resulting sludge was set atop the generator beneath a bowl. After about an hour, she lifted the bowl and there was a little yellow cake! They gave the boy a small piece, and he tried his best to eat it slowly. It was the best tasting and most nutritious food he had ever eaten!

That bag had been used up long ago, and food was becoming progressively harder to come by. Eventually Patty had died of starvation, despite the others giving to her what they could. Mugler always took the largest share, since he was the only one who went deeper into Lud in search of edibles. They had thrown Patty's body into the Send, but sometimes when he was particularly hungry the boy shamefully wondered if they should have kept her and made use of her remains instead.

Such thoughts stung even more as this unknown woman had offered him 'a bite to eat'! "I'll show you a bite" the boy disdainfully thought, and lunged out at Susannah. She wasn't surprised and quickly brought him down with a pistol whip from one of Roland's big revolvers.

"Now why would you go and do that?" Susannah questioned "I'm just offering you food you little twerp!"

The boy lunged again and swiped at her with a chipped box cutter, Susannah rolled out of the way and smacked the knife out of his hand where it skittered into a sewer drain.

"Now stop that! Don't you know what this is!?" She leveled the revolver at the boy "I could blow your sorry ass to the other side of the Send if I needed to, but that won't happen if you just settle down! You just take a seat there and don't go off running and hollerin for your buddies."

The boy snarled at her, but did sit down when he saw the gun was now pointed at his chest.

"Good, now the offer for Instaeggs is still open, but I'm not giving out any bacon after that little show of yours"

The boy just kept staring at her sullenly. Susannah shrugged, scraped some eggs onto a little rectangular plate (which had the great letters "5YTU8" stamped on the bottom) and slid it over to him. This time, the boy quickly crammed the yellow stuff into his face and paid little attention to Susannah.

"Never a big fan of it myself, but I guess some people like it." she muttered.

**Note:**I have no plans to add to this story, but please let me know if you would like to read more! Let me know what you think!


End file.
